Swedish police charge Pirate Bay

I like the way that your site gives a fair and balanced view; both that of the MPAA and the 'other side'.
It is refreshing to be told so squarely, exactly what is ethical and what is not.

*cough*

Don't bother to pay Charlie, just stick his copy on a file sharing site and then post it up. MAFIAA-like tactics of insisting on being paid for work performed are obviously against his personal ethics.

Doesnt the Pirate Bay run its one bit torrent tracker?

If TPB are in trouble just for being a search engine, then google are just as responsible. If I want a torrent I just google what I want +torrent.

Yeah it's easier to sue the search engines and trackers, but they actually don't store any copyrighted material.

They should go for every peer, which could be thousands for each torrent. But that would be prohibitively expensive, and pretty much impossible (except if you are as greedy and rich as RIAA).

Oh and about the "balance" of your article, well, it's just right for me.

...posters #1 and #2 don't get the point...

Poster #3 is on the right track - TPB, and other sites like it, are essentially just search engines. You can find the same stuff via Google, Ask.com, LiveSearch, etc.

You can't stop people from sharing stuff - legally or illegally. You can't ban blank CDs because some people copy music onto them and give them to friends...and you can't ban a search engine because some people offer to give away their electronic copies of music/movies/whatever.

The problem is not TPB, or other sites like it. The problem is human behavior, and the obvious reaction that humans have to the current state of the RIAA/MPAA fiasco and other related issues. This has nothing to do with technology at all - it's the human response to percieved injustice/inequity, and people will do whatever it is that they want to do.

"why not try something that you might succeed at, like herding cats, pushing piles of sand uphill with a rake, and reducing global warming by sorting greenhouse gases out of the air with a hammer." 
All great ideas haha

The author doesn't suggest that stealing copyrighted works is a good thing. Neither does he opine that art should be available for free or at a loss to the media industries.

What he does suggest is that the media industries are corrupt and try and close down anything they percieve, rightly OR wrongly to be a threat. They assume that attacking a threat is much better than learing by it.

There are the same guys (the Media industries) who tries to close down cassette tape, video, DVD copying and countless other innovations that allowed people freedom to view or listen to goods they bought in the manner they wished to.

They are morons. They cheat, they collude on price, rip off consumers and then, astoundingly, get bent out of shape when the products they themselves have devalued are treated as having little value by consumers.

The "old" media isn't in freefall because of illegal filesharing. It's in freefall because they produce rubbish. Less diversity and more cheap tat. In addition the price fixing cartels have placed the idea in peoples heads that music/video is overpriced.

The media industries could have monetised p2p if they had had the foresight to involve themselves and learn lessons from the past. They haven't. If it were up to these guys we'd be listening to Britney Spears on Wax cylinder and travelling by horse and cart.

Greed has been their undoing. And I won't shed a tear for an industry that has revelled in ripping off the creators of their wealth (the artists) for years. Impoverished slaves working to fund the coke habits of the record industry moguls. 

Boo hoo....I feel bad for them that the gravy train has derailed. Their bullying can't get them everything. Aeronic and Arron, attack the author he actually writes, not your idea of what he might have written. Tip : When commenting try reading beyond the headline.

It doesn't matter who's side the law is on, if one side has a ton more money. You can win through intimidation and through simply outspending the other side. 

Intimidation clearly didn't work. I'll miss the Pirate Bay's FU style reply letters.


dem cats do neat herding.

if ppl steal your money and you take stuff back you are not a crook just a low grade hero, so when media moguls overcharge you it is ok to screw them in return, record labels are more affected by filesharing cause they charge you the same as in teh 80s for music that they have no distribution costs on, moviehouses actually increase sales from p2p cause ppl can see a cam or mp4 and decide to hit the theaters or buy a dvd, when bluray players are 50, movies 15, 1080p sets under600, no one will bother trading movies at all, studios can release exteneded mp4 20min previews on unkown films to increase their sales, the big problem is theaters, at 5bucks or less they were always sold out, university cinemas which still are cheap are always sold out, if they keep charging 13bucks, and another 13 for some pop and popcorn ppl will just stay home, and BigBill already has too much of my money, I did manual bug reporting on 3.0, and fixed a zillion me's which should have been recalled with free upgrades to xp, powerdvd for 70bucks , are you kidding me, use vlc or your tv, if something is traded online its overpriced, dell gets premium for say20 or 30, builders have to pay 120, and everyone pays another 100 for dreamscene, which Bigbill stole from the linux opensource community, my friend had video wallpaper on his ubuntu back in 2002, I only make 10bucks an hour, no way billionares are getting my money I buy groceries at the farmers market or clearance shops, yeah anyhoo hope everyone has a great week ty kristaps

but remember p2p is for poor ppl unless its legal fairtrade indie art, if you are a doctor or lawyer or someone rich and can afford stuff then buy stuff, and if you are a cop, arrest real criminals like petro executives weapons dealers bankers and government officials that maintain an unbalanced world economy ty kman

...when he says that Media-producers real problem is that they produce "rubbish".

I clearly remember many times in which I bought games which were covered with all kind of misleading informations on their cover only to forget them somewhere after recognizing their worthlessness...

...and when I bought games which were so filled with bugs that you'll waste your entertainment by playing again and again hoping that on the 11th patch you'll have a decently-working game!

...or bugged games which had an international version which was unsupported on the "patch side"!

The problem is that the Media industry 99.99% of the time wants to bugger you and steal your money without any real hard work under tons of marketing & communication lies...

The Pirate Party's opinion is usually ignored, but here it goes anyway:

Sharing files is not theft. It falls (at least, here in the United States) under the doctrine of "fair use" in that people are in no way making any kind of profit on it. An empirical study done by the University of London in Canada showed that people purchased an average of 44% more CD's if they shared free but "unauthorised" music, resulting not in fewer sales, but in more sales. Spreading MP3's is not merely sharing, but a form of viral marketing that artists can take advantage of.

There is little justification for the continued harassment of The Pirate Bay. Though I've never personally spoken with any of the members, I can say that this level of harassment is precisely what the citizens of the United States are being subjected to every day, and by the same organization.

There is no justification for limiting the rights of any population so that one industry can profit. I believe that the Copyright Regime will fall, that TPB will be vindicated, and that there will be a great deal of scurrying about in general because of "new information" that somehow the MPA, RIAA/IFPI or other MAFIAA organizations have overlooked. I don't know what that might be, but I suspect that will be the final outcome of this bout with them.

People don't like being suppressed. It's in our nature to fight against being held back. And when that suppression become oppressive, the response can be impressive.

probably the biggest problem is price distribution. the amount u can purchase in $1 is US is not equal to say 40 rupees in India (u can easily get a decent meal at that cost) They may be equal at exchange rate but not at purchasing power. that's why book companies release low cost edition of book. but software companies, movie makes forget that. and that's what lead to piracy.